ANNALES
LUBLIN -POLONIA
UN IVE RSI TATI S MARIAE CURIE-SKŁODOWSKA
VOL, VI, 10 SECTIO I 1981
Międzyuczelniany Instytut Filozofii 1 Socjologii UMCS
Andrzej NOWICKI
The Polycentric Structure of the Subject of Culture Reviews
Policentryczna struktura podmiotu kultury Полицентрическая структура субъекта культуры
There are reputedly as many as five hundred different definitions of culture. This usually prompts a conclusion that all papers on culture still have no scientific character and all discussions are futile, because every speaker on culture talks about something different.
Wrong. While speaking about culture, people usually talk about the same thing, only from different standpoints. This multiplicity of points of view and the consequent multiplicity of definitions are a positive thing, a chance to grasp culture comprehensively, taking into considera
tion its objective multiaspectuality.
That great number of definitions is after all easy to put in order.
They can be divided most conveniently, into three large groups; subjective definitions, objective definitions, and synthetic definitions.
According to an objective definitions, culture is a collection of man’s products.1 Controversies concern first of all whether science has a legi
timate right to value these products. Those who regard refraining from valuation as a scientific criterion maintain that culture is made up of the whole body of man’s products, including instruments of torture and garbage dumps. This is the position taken by most archeologists, ethno
graphers, and sociologists. Others see the necessity for an evaluative
1 Such a definition has been adopted by J. Szczepański: Elementarne po
jęcia socjologii, 3rd ed., Warszawa 1972, p. 78. — ’ ’ culture is the aggregate of
products produced by man in the process of labour ”, etc.
products produced by man in the process of labour ”, etc.
separation of successful products from what is a kitsch, daub, trash, mediocrity, a product of graphomania or defective work. Not every painted canvas and not every sheet of paper with writing or even print on it are a ’’contribution to culture”. That is why historians of art, literature or of philosophy usually prefer a narrower, valuating defini
tion of culture, which they see as a collection of valuable products.
According to an objective definition culture consists of men2 * or their specific traits, behaviour, and skills, especially the skill of behaving according to a certain pattern, the skill of producing specific objects and the skill of using them. Such a conception of culture is characteristic of psychologists.
According to a synthetic definition, culture is a dialectical unity of the world of human activities and the world of products of these acti
vities? In this definition we do not oppose man to his products, because specifically human products, like working tools, clothing, houses, industry, works of art belong to the concept of man, as the factors constituting the essence of humanity, with man being present in them more than in his own body. In what sense ’’more present”? First of all in that we can learn more about man from his products than from observing his own body. This holds true both for individuals and nations. When we say that a cultured man should ’’know Beethoven”, ’’know Raphael”, or
’’know Hegel”, we do not mean the knowledge their doctors had of them, but the knowledge of musical pieces, pictures, and books. Similarly, the concept of ’’Poldshness” is constituted by the products of the Poles over the last several centuries to a much greater degree than by the anthro
pometric data about the average or commonest shape of the skull, the colour of skin, hair, and eyes.
With such a synthetic, bipolar conception of culture, we can discover that culture is a field of tensions between what can be termed its
’’subjective side” and what can be termed its ’’objective side”. These tensions result from the objective regularities of the processes of ex
teriorization and interioriization.4
While exteriorizing himself into the object he has produced, man is never identical with his objectification; he transfers into it only a small particle of his personality and not always can he recognize himself in it or be recognized by others. What man produces not always remains his property. It is often taken from him. Likewise, men
’ See A. Nowicki: Kultura i rewolucja, "Studia filozoficzne ”, 1975, 1 (ПО), pp. 167— 174 and W spółczesna filozofia włoska, Warszawa 1977, pp. 86, 544 — 545. See also M. Rossi: Cultura e rivoluzione, Roma 1974, pp. 9— 11.
» See A. Nowicki: Człowiek w iwiecie dzieł, Warszawa 1974, pp. 325—333.
4 Ibid., chapters Interiorization, pp. 67 — 116, and Eksterioryzacja, pp. 117 — 126.
The Polycentric Structure of the Subject of Culture Reviews 167 cannot always control what they have produced. It happens that the products of human work turn against man. Out of the labour of workers arises capital which makes them its slaves. Nations are arming them
selves for their security. The produced multitude of weapons of mass destruction poses a threat of the total annihilation of life on our planet.
On the other hand, the processes of interiorization are governed by the laws of fragmentarization and deformation of what we acquire while using the products of culture.
In the sciences of culture, especially in the histories of literature, art, or of philosophy, tensions between the subjective and the objective sides of the material under investigation make tnemselves felt as methodo
logical controversies between the ergocentric approach, which seeks to investigate the ’’work itself” isolated from its psychological context, and the biographical approach, for which each work is primarily a source of information about its creator.
Ergocentrism can lead to a subjectless conception of culture, which has a multi-current character and assumes different forms. We shall want to discuss only a few forms here: in painting, history of philosophy, and the theory of social development.
In their characterization of the Renaissance breakthrough in the history of art, historians pointed not only to ’’the discovery of nature”
and the appearance of care about the beauty of the works produced, but also to the Renaissance discovery of man as the creator of his work. Man has a right to seal his work with the individual stamp of his personality, and to sign the work with his own name. It was then that it was noticed that the history of art cannot be reduced to a history of works alone, but that it had to be complemented with the biographies of their creators.
Those convictions were forcibly expressed especially by Giorgio Vasari.
In the centuries to follow reactionary tendencies were often connected with appeals for the ’’return to the Middle Ages”. Such trends can be found in the 17th-century counter-Renaissance, in some trends of the Romantic reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and later in the Catholic revival of scholastics, in the apeal for the ’’return to Thomas Aquinas”.
Even in our times reactionary tendencies appear not only as more and more powerful waves of irrationalism, but also as typically anti-Re- naissance 3 attempts to oust the subject from, say, contemporary painting. 6
6 See H. Haydn: The Counter-Renaissance, New York 1950. The merit of this
author is the introduction of the term ’’ counter-Renaissance ” , indispensable for the
investigation of the European culture in 16th and 17th centuries. The term should
be understood in a different sense than that in Haydn ’ s work.
investigation of the European culture in 16th and 17th centuries. The term should
be understood in a different sense than that in Haydn ’ s work.
It would be in order here to call up an extremely interesting article by Andrzej Osęka with an alarming title Zanikające ”ja” (”I” on the wane).6
As late as until mid-20th century ’’the element uniting the seeing, integrating the work was the subject, the artist”, whereas, remarks Osę
ka, "in the art developing over the last twenty years, this subject, the artist, is on the wane”. Many artists are taking pains to make their works impersonal. ’’Perhaps”, says Osęka, ’’this is a negation of oneself as the subject, the essential non-acceptance of oneself, human condition, and of that whole tradition of culture, which has elevated so high the figure and personality of the artist”. ’’Objects of art are produced which have no extra-objective reasons (...) They are pure physical entities which intrude themselves upon the imagination of the beholder .and shape it, in
culcating the belief in the non-existence of I”.
We shall now look at the subjectless conception of the history of phi
losophy. It follows from a definite conception of man, which sees the essence of humanity in that which is general, non-individual, common.
In this conception the diversity of men is valuated as a negative thing, which should be overcome. Especially in philosophy, diversity of stand
points tends to be explained by the disturbances of the rational process of thinking by ’’subjectivity”, which deprives philosophy of its scientific character. Therefore, if philosophy is to be a science, we must overcome, weed out ’’subjectivity” and rise in our statements to the level of uni
versal generality and objectivity. In that way, real, living men will cease to be the subjects of thinking which constitutes ’’scientific philosophy”.
Philosophy devoid of subjectivism becomes an impersonal composition, a product of the impersonal ’’reason in general”. Such tendencies can be found in Hegel.6 7 Husserl followed a similar path in his Ideas, including in the characteristics of the phenomenological method a directive of abstracting from the concrete subject — its place was to be taken by the imaginary, impersonal ’’transcendental ego”.8 In the next phase of his development Husserl abandoned this conception and returned to concrete subjects immersed in the Lebenswelt.
Another version of the subjectless conception of philosophy was pro
6 A. Osęka: Zanikające ”ja ” , ’’Kultura” 8 June 1980.
’ "A position must be shown ”, says Hegel, ’ ’ where ’ I ’ in its individuality resigns of itself. I must be indeed an abolished particular subjectivity; there must exist objectivity which I recognize, which I regard as true, which is recognized as affir mative (...) whereby I, as this very T, am negated (...) This is nothing but a position of the thinking reason (...)”. G. W. F. Hegel: "Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, quoted after A. Nowicki: Filozofowie о religii, Warszawa 1960, vol. 1, pp. 224 —225.
• See A. Nowicki: Marxism and Phenomenology in Contemporary Italian
Philosophy, in: ’’Dialects and Humanism ”, 1975, 2, pp. 157 — 175.
The Polycentric Structure of the Subject of Culture Reviews
169posed by Frege. He starts from an assumption that a sentence has in
ternal sense, independent of the psychological context. While building a sentence count therefore, we can abstract from the subject, who utters these sentences.®
From the Marxist point of view, these conceptions are connected with the error of the metaphysical method, which isolates the object of in
vestigations from the context which determines their essence and sense.
In the case of philosophy the socio-historical, situational, and class con
texts are involved. The sense of a text is determined by the author’s engagement on the side of a definite class (this is seen most clearly in the analysis of such words as freedom or justice, which do not have their own neutral sense out of their context) and by situation (the author’s approach or departure from a definite position — here the sense of the text can only be grasped in comparison with earlier and later texts).* 10
The value of philosophy does not lie in its impersonal, atemporal and ahistorical character. What is most valuable in philosophy always bears a distinct mark of the historical epoch, nation, social class, and perso
nality of the philosopher. That is why manuals of history of philosophy should not confine themselves to reporting the texts of philosophical treatises, but should present them in their real involvement in the most important contexts: the context of historical events, the context of political and class struggle, and the psychological-biographical context. The way of making philosophy scientific does not lead through the destruction of
’’subjectivity” and elimination of the investigator’s personality from his considerations. Rather, it leads through the full revelation of all circum
stances and contexts, in which the subject of considerations finds himself.
Although his point of view is subjective, the relation between this point of view and the obtained results has an objective character.
In the theory of social development we also find conceptions of subjectless history, in which the direction of development is decided by impersonal, ’’objective factors”. Freedom in such conceptions is considered a subjective illusion. In the history of Marxism, especially in the period of the International II, a significant role, negative in consequences, was played by a mechanistic-determinist interpretation, which reverted to a definition of freedom worked out by Spinoza: ’’freedom is a
• See G. Frege: Pisma semantyczne, Warszawa 1977, p. 117. ” If every thought required its carrier, it would be his thought only. There would be no science common to all...” Der Gedanke. Eine logische Untersuchung in ’ ’ Beiträge zur Philo sophie des deutschen Idealismus ”, I, 1918, pp. 58—77.
10 See A. Nowicki: Sens tekstu filozoficznego w świetle historyzmu Lenina,
’ ’ Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis” , 136, ’ ’Prace Filozoficzne” VII, Wrocław 1971,
pp. 3— 14.
conscious necessity”. In such a fatalistic, subjectless conception of social development there was no room for revolutionary initiative. This made it difficult for the working class to constitute themselves as the real subject of history. The philosophical significance of Lenin’s activity lies first of all in that he opposed the active, revolutionary interpretation of Marxism to the economic fatalism of the reformists.
In the lay movement, a relict of the subjectless conception of social development was the so-called indifferentism. A conviction was advanced that the change of social system, the development of industrialization and urbanization, and the eradication of illiteracy released so ’’powerful”
’’objective factors” of the secularization of social consciousness that religion would automaticaly die without the agency of atheists. The chief theoretician of eliminating the lay subject from secularization processes was Władysław Bieńkowski.
The foregoing considerations are an introduction to the discussion proper of the forms of the functioning of the subject in culture. This is where we shall attempt to advance a hypothesis that this subject has a polycentric structure.
This hypothesis is connected with the dialectical theory of personality. If one of the most universal laws applying to the whole reality is the law of development through inner contradictions, then we can presume that this law also applies to the manner in which personality functions and is formed. It appears therefrom that the basis of forming our personality is not integration around one centre, but that there are several such centres and that it is the tensions between them that are the source of movement, that release creative energy and stimu
late activity.
If the basis of specifically human function is exteriorizing oneself into the objects we produce and this exteriorization lies in stamping the objects with the seal of our personality, then the best, intersubjectively verifiable proof that it really possesses a polycentric structure should be the reflection of our personality in the objects into which we have exteriorized ourselves.
Before we proceed to investigate this reflection we should consider first where this polycentrioity comes from and what are the factors polycentrizing our personality. One such factor is heredity.
We inherit definite traits and dispositions, not only physical but also psychical, and not only from our father, but also from mother, and also from their parents and from more distant ancestors, then, if there are significant psychological differences between the persons from whom we inherit, tensions should arise between the inherited dispositions. Wła
dysław Witwicki made interesting comments on the subject in his earlier
The Polycentric Structure of the Subject of Culture Reviews
171reviews of painting exhibitions written at the beginning of this century.
He points to the fact that in certain historical periods painting develops in a continuous way and those who imitate the predecessors from their cultural sphere are the most successful at that time. This is easiest for those who belong to this sphere also by their descent. The case is different in the turning periods, when the condition for painting to de
velop further is to break off radically with tradition and to offer some
thing novel and unusual for a given cultural sphere. And those who have an admixture of some foreign blood find it easiest to succeed. Jan Toorop (1858—1928) can serve as an example, having revolutionized Dutch painting at the close of the 19th c. He was bom in Java, in his chldhood he took Indonesia art to heart, from his father he had an admixture of Norwegian blood, and from his mother—Chinese. Similarly, Belgian graphic art was revolutionalized by Felicien Rops (1833—1898), who wrote in the letters to his friends that ”at heart he was a grandchild of a Hungarian and a Spanish woman”, that ’’there was in him a yearning for the unrestricted, profligate freedom of the Hungarian steppe”, and that, ”he had to control himself very much not to kick the fetters of convention which custom makes him wear”u. ”He did not go to the steppes”, says Witwicki, ’’but he began to draw a whole series of covers for prohibited books.” 11
Among the personages of Polish culture two most typical examples are enough: an admixture of French blood in Chopin and of Czech blood in Jan Matejko. In Russian culture we find Pushkin with and admixture of Negro blood. The turning point which German philosophy owes to Nietzsche can be attributed to his admixture of Polish blood. Witwiicki, who adopted Nietzschean ’’will to power” (Wille zur Macht) as the fonda
tion of his theory of criticism, described Nietzsche as ’’perhaps the most Polish among philosophers, and the greatest philosopher among the Poles”.«
These, perhaps dubious, influences of internally diversified heredity are much less important than the diversity of ’’decisive encounters”.11 * * 14
11 W. Witwicki: Wystawa sztychów Hopsa, ’ ’ Słowo Polskie”, 525, Lvov, 11 Nov., 1907.
u Ibid. See also W. Witwicki:Z wystawy obrazów — Jan Toorop, ’ ’ Słowo Polskie ” , 148, Lvov, 28 March 1902.
ls W. Witwicki: Z psychologii stosunków osobistych, ’’Przegląd Filozoficz ny ” , 1907, 4, p. 537.
14 See A. Nowicki: Incontrologia e transformabilita, ’’Misure Critiche ” , Sa
lerno 1976, 19, pp. 77 — 88; Zadania i metody inkontrologii, ’ ’Folia Societatis Scien-
tiarum Lublinensis” , vol. 18, Hum. 1, Lublin 1976, pp. 13—19; O marksistowską in-
kontrologię, Zarys ogólnej teorii spotkań, ’’ Studia Filozoficzne” , Warszawa 1977, 5
(138), pp. 35—43.
(138), pp. 35—43.
If it is true that the encountered person can — in the process of in- teriorizing the encounter — transform himself into the subjective element of our personality, then an encounter of several eminent personalities can result in an inner dissociation and tensions consequent on the fact that
”we carry in us” people who profess different views and have different attitudes. This applies especially to our teachers.15 16 17 18 At the time of sta
bilization dogmatic attitudes are preferred: faith in the authority of one teacher, resignation of independent thinking, declaration of philosophiz
ing not iuxta mentem propriam but iuxta mentem divinissimi Thomae or iuxta mentem Duns Scoti.17 At the time of the great turn of Welt
anschauung in the Renaissance (die grösste progressive Umwälzung according to Engels 18) ’’philosophical freedom” 19 was sought in metho
dological pluralism 20. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463—1494), one of the most eminent thinkers in the Italian Quattrocento, asserted that he would not follow just one master, but would regard all philosophers as his teachers.21
Having many different teachers (not only in the sense of personal contact with contemporaneous people, but also and above all in the sense of having thoroughly studied the works of representatives of various philosophical trends) turns our consciousness into a field of tensions which set our thought in motion from the inside. Such tensions are easy to discern among the greatest philosophers: with Plato they are tensions caused by the interiorization of contradictions between the views of He
raclitus, Parmenides, and Socrates; with Aristotle — the interiorization of contradictions between Plato’s idealism and the materialism of na
turalists; with St. Augustine — contradictions between theology and Plato’s pagan philosophy; with St. Thomas — contradictions between St. Augustine’s authority and Aristotle’s pagan philosophy; with Kant — contradictions between Leibniz’s dogmatism and Hume’s scepticism; with 15 See A. Nowicki: Człowiek w świecie dzieł, pp. 47, 69 — 71, 75, 92—96, 115, 321, 342.
16 I have devoted a book to the problem, Nauczyciele, Lublin 1981.
17 These expressions can still be found in the titles of Polish school manuals in the later 18 c. See Bibliografia filozofii polskiej 1750—1830, Warszawa 1955, pp. 213 —240.
11 F. Engels: Dialektik der Natur. Einleitung, Berlin 1955, p. 7.
18 Compare the term philosophica libertas in Giordano Bruno ’s writings and libertas cogitationis in the poem by a Polish Renaissance poet, Sebastian Fabian Klonowie.
80 See A. Nowicki: Il pluralisme metodico e i modelli Lulliani di Giordano Bruno, Wroclaw 1965 and Giordano Bruno, Warszawa 1979, pp. 50 —54.
21 G. Pico della Mirandola: Oratio de hominis dignitate, ed. E. Garin,
Firenze 1942, p. 138.
The Polycentric Structure of the Subject of Culture Reviews
173Marx — contradictions between Hegel’s idealist dialectic and Feuerbach’s materialist anthropology.
If such tensions caused by inner contradictions were absent, thought would be at a standstill, while a philosopher would duplicate himself in his subsequent works because he would lose the ability of ’’dividing himself” and of self-critical judg
ment of his own (thoughts. That is why the above-named psychologist, Władysław Witwicki, not only investigated and described inner contra
dictions of
outjudgments, attitudes, or views, but also postulated such division of oneself as an indispensable condition of artistic creation and scientific investigation. A good painter must possess the faculty of dividing himself into a creator and a critic who judges every line or patch of paint, eacn detail and mutual relations between them within a whole. A psycho
logist must be able to divide himself into the object under observation and the subject who is observing his own psychical states. And the condition of writing good scientific dissertation is having a Mephistopheles in one
self, who will search out for arguments against our theses, and will try to ridicule them and overthrow — such an inner dialogue will protect us from hasty generalizations and make us express our own thought more precisely.22
If the polycentric structure of the subject is, to a significant degree, a product of encounters and contacts with other people, who gradually transform themselves in the process of interiorization into subjective elements of our personality, then the works of men, especially those we value the highest, are never pro
ducts of an individual but social ones. And it is not only doctoral disserta
tions that show the supervisor’s coauthorship behind them. Also in ma
ture works, in the masterpieces of literature, music, or painting, and in philosophy and sciences we can discover the presence of many generations of teachers, whose work contributed to the formation of the author’s personality.
Works of men are social products not only in their genesis, but also and above all in their historical life. On the one hand, vast circles of those culture-makers, whose achievements the author was able to acquire, participate in the process of nascency of a work. On the other hand, a ’’ready” work, by entering the process of social circula
tion, is co-formed by vast circles of recipients who actualize its potential
elements, complete what was still not completed, fill ’’empty slots” by
the effort of their reason and imagination, concretize it with their own
22 W. Witwicki: Review of M. Sobeski, Interludia, „Ruch Filozoficzny” ,
HI, 3, Lvov, 15 March 1913, pp. 51 — 52.
interpretations, and also modify this work according to their needs, treating it as a raw material for their creation23.
A conclusion thus follows that historians of literature, of art, and of philosophy must not confine themselves to investigating the work ’’itself”
in its ’’final shape”, but should, on the one hand, investigate the complex process of the nascency of a given work, and on the other, investigate how, in the process of social circulation over consecutive centuries, this appa
rently ’’final” shape undergoes further modifications. It turns out then that the ’’biographical” context we spoke about earlier is admittedly an indispensable element of the scientific interpretation of the text. It is, however, even more important to analyze a given work in the right social contexts which this work entered in consecutive stages of its historical life.
The investigation of the ’’posthumous history” of a work of art or of philosophy is not new at all. There are a number of outstanding studies on the problem.24 The novelty lies in something else. The investigations at issue have so far been regarded as a separate discipline, different from investigations proper which sought to grasp the ’’essence” of the work.
This ’’essence” of the work was assumed to lie in the work itself, the way it was received by consecutive generations having no bearing at all upon its ’’essence”.
If we assume, however, that the historical conception of being — where being is identical with its history: being is not only what it is in a given moanent, but also what it was and can be — applies also to philosophical works and works of art, then the ’’essence” of the work turns out not to have a final shape determined once and for all. Instead it develops and changes with its historical life because it is co-formed by its active recipients.
That explains why it is easier to investigate the ancient, or Re
naissance, or 19th-century masterpieces than contemporary works. The case is similar to that of medicine. The ’’essence” of a drug includes its power to cure. With drugs in use for scores of years, the knowledge about their properties has been accumulated and set in order: we know their
’’power”. With new drugs it is difficult to predict their side effects, which
was dramatically demonstrated in the thalidomide case. In the same
way, the essence of the work lies not so much in what the work looks
like, what structure it has, or what it is made of, but in what is its power
of affecting, its recipients, whether it can make them laugh, reflect, or
will move them or draw their attention, whether the work sets reason
and imagination in motion, whether it can make the recipient transform
23 See A. Nowicki: Teksty filozoficzne z punktu widzenia ich przekształcal-
ności, ’ ’Studia Filozoficzne” , 1975, 12 (121), pp. 77 —90.
The Polycentric Structure of the Subject of Culture Reviews
175himself into an active co-creator ’’who feels the need to fill empty slots”, to interpret, and transform. Whether it can inspire poets, painters, film directors, composers and philosophers.25
A thorough study of Plato’s texts is certainly indispensable to know his philosophy. It is not, however, sufficient because it cannot answer the question what power his philosophy has to stimulate the imagination of painters and composers. It is only studies on the posthumous history of Plato, on the paintings by Anselm Feuerbach, a hundred and some dozen drawings by Władysław Witwicki, or on Luis Andriessen’s piece De Staat that demonstrate that twenty-four centuries after Plato’s death his text can still stimulate painters and composers to complement it with picture and sound.2* Similarly, musical pieces by Stefan Niculescu, Bo
gusław Schäffer, or Hans Zender reveal ’’the hidden power”, vis occulta, of Heraclitus’ aphorisms, the power to stimulate contemporary composers to try to translate philosophical thoughts into sounds.27 Likewise, to grasp the ’’essence” of Vanini’s philosophy we must know not only the text öf his works and not only the biographical context, but also the historical context of the poems by Hölderlin and Lecomte de Lisle, a novel by Jan Parandowski,28 of the sculptures by Eugenio Maccagnani, pictures by Zbigniew Martin, Jan Berowski-Zamojski and Mieczysław Wojtas or of the musical pieces by Hauer and Schaffer.29
Thus behind every individual author of a work of art or scientific work, there is the collective subject which consists of ’’teachers”
in the broadest sense of the word on the one hand, and on the other, of various categories of recipients. And as long as this work is ’’alive”, it does not possess a final shape because it is co-formed by the ever-en
larging ’’collective subject of culture”.
’* E.g. in E. Stemplinger: Das Fortleben der Horazischen Lyrik seit der Renaissance, Leipzig 1906; F. Novotny: The Posthumous Lije of Plato, Prague 1077.
“ See A. Nowicki: Portrety filozofów w poezji, malarstwie i muzyce, Lub lin 1978.
26 See A. Nowicki: Sokrates na rysunkach Władysława Witwickiego, ’ ’ Mean
der ”, 1977, 7—8, pp. 289 — 306.
27 A. Nowicki: O ’ ’dźwiękowych portretach ” Heraklita i Platona w muzyce współczesnej awangardy, "Meander” , 1978, 2, pp. 81 —92.
28 See A. Nowicki: Bruno i Vanini w świetle poezji, dramatu i muzyki,
’ ’ Euhemer ” , 1980, 2 (76), pp. 55 — 68. The fragment devoted to Vanini plays a signi
ficant part in Jan Parandowski ’ novel Niebo w płomieniach. It should be noted that in his portrayals of teachers in this novel Parandowski also included some characteristics of his grammar-school teacher, Władysław Witwicki.
22 See A. Nowicki: Vanini w muzyce J. M. Hauera, ’’ Euhemer ” , 1976, 4 (102),
pp. 3—17 and Ateizm w muzyce. Droga Bogusława Schäffera do Vaniniany, ’’ Euhe
mer ”, 1979, 2 (112), pp. 61 —70.
From this standpoint there is not significant difference between such human works as a book and a town. Only, in the case of town, which was being built and developed over many centuries we can see more clearly that it was created by the collective subject, which consisted of people from different social classes, having different occupations and living in different centuries. Even if we speak about the ’’founders of towns’’ and at present there are positions of chief architects or town- -planners, who plan and co-ordinate the town development, the poly
centric structure of the subject creating the town is never doubted.
There is no significant difference, either, between the culture created by professionals, who make their living by literary, musical, or artistic activities, and the folk culture of the anonymous period where behind particular works there is clearly the collective subject that co-created them. The knowledge of the sources drawn from by the professional writer, artist, composer, or film director — excluding drastic cases of piracy — does not diminish the value of an individual’s work, but can be considered an additional quality by an educated recipient. It is pleasant to find echoes of reading Homer and Virgil in Pan Tadeusz, or see how the ’’movements of Matejko’s hand continue to live” 30 in the paintings by Wyspiański, Mehoffer, Sichulski and Bulas. According to the theory of the polycentric structure of the subject, Matejko is present not only in his paintings, but also in those by hils disciples because he became an active, subjective element of their creative personality.
Finally, we should discuss — from this standpoint — the relations between the concepts of workers’ culture and socialist culture. Sixty years ago there were attempts to oppose ’’the workers’ culture” as a collection of works by individual workers to the ’’bourgeois culture”
created by educated, specialized professionals. In the first confrontation, the novelty of the subject-matter, revolutionary commitment and pri
mitive means of expression created an illusion that it was possible and desirable to reject the whole cultural tradition because a ’’socialist culture” was born, which was created by the workers themselves.31 It was found out quickly that the concept of socialist cul
ture was much broader, ampler and deeper than a collection of pro
ducts of the amateur creation of the people who, because they belonged 30 W. Wit wieki: Z lwowskiego salonu, ’ ’Słowo Polskie ” , 440, Lvov, 28 Sep
tember 1906.
31 One of the first Polish papers on workers ’ culture was an article O kulturze robotniczej by my grammar-school teacher, Stefan Bernard Drzewieski (1888 —1953).
It was published in Sprawa Robotnicza (1, 2— 3, I, 8 and 21 April 1918), the organ of the Petrograd group of the SDKPiL (Social Democracy of the Polish Kingdom and Lithuania). Drzewieski was then a follower of the Proletkult-proletarian culture
— and admired the works by A. Gastev, a worker.
The Polycentric Structure of the Subject of Culture Reviews 177
to the class compelled to earn their living by hard manual labour, lacked thourough general education and specialist for the artist’s profession.
What was created in their leisure time, as the product of worker alone, was largely at the peripheries of culture, the folklore of the suburbs, an imitation of second-rate bourgeois models. Much more important for socialist culture were the works by professionals: Gorky, Mayakowski, Pudovkin, Eisenstein.
Among the masses, in the families of workers or peasants there have always been many talents which as a rule could not be revealed or de
veloped in the system of social injustice. An elementary condition for these talents to develop fully is many years of education and then enough free time to develop oneself to creation. The road to building socialist culture does not lead, therefore, through the favouring of amateur creation by uneducated people, which would replace the whole of the hitherto existing culture, but through widespread general education at the secondary level, the accessibility of university education for all who are able and diligent, through the acquisition of the achievements of the existing culture, and through arousing in the vast masses the authen
tic needs to read good books, see good paintings, to listen to good music, and finally through forming the ability of the active reception of works in social circulation.
We have to do with Socialist culture only when its four basic ele
ments coexist at the same time:
1) when the relations between men have a really humanistic cha
racter,
2) when there are no social barriers of participation in culture, that is when the cultural values become social property and all have equal access to them and a real opportunity of using them,
3) when new works have contents that are progressive, democratic, intemationalistic, and free from irrationalism,
4) when the majority of the society transform themselves from the passive object of cultural influences into the active sub
ject of culture (both as the ability of the active reception of cultural values and as the participation in forming them).32
With such a definition of socialist culture, this concept does not serve to describe the existing cultural reality, but formulates a task to be realized.
We know that with respect to the foregoing four points we are only at the beginning of the difficult road to the culture of a classless society.
” A. No wieki: O kulturę socjalistyczną, ’’ Oświata Dorosłych” 5 (214), May 1980, pp. 197—200.
12 Annales, sectio I, vol. VI
